Action Research

Action research is a process that leaders and educators use to make ongoing everyday decisions and adjustments. It enables a principal to use reflection and research to investigate his/her own practices. It gives the leader a sense of ownership as he/she will look back at previous decisions and decide where there needs to be changes. Then research takes place to decide what course of action should take place. The findings are shared with the leadership team. Expertise skills are developed as the leader will learn what actions should take place and reflect on those actions to see if more changes should take place. Action research allow for participant inquiry and decision-making from the leader whereas the traditional educational research allowed others like university professors to make decisions about another principal's campus. Simply, the campus leader and educators are the ones in the trenches and would be the ones who can make the right decisions for change. As a principal, I would use action research to help me develop decision-making skills for making everyday decisions on my campus. For example, if my campus was not doing well on the Math TAKS Test, I could use action research by researching how other successful schools were running their Math department. I would share my findings with my math department chair and assistant principal overseeing the math department. Through collaboration, I would make a decision as to what action was to take place next to improve our math scores. I would decide on a method to evaluate our changes and to decide if any adjustments need to be made as the year went on.